How can archive.org release 2,500 free DOS browser games (Dune, Oregon Trail)? | Hacker News Reader

How can archive.org release 2,500 free DOS browser games (Dune, Oregon Trail)?

12 pointslogicallee10 comments

The Internet Archive has released 2,400 MS-DOS games free to play in browser.

Write-up: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/01/05/you-can-now-play-nearly-2400-ms-dos-video-games-in-your-browser/

Link to games: https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos_games/v2

I wonder how they could do this? The WP article does not mention copyright issues. This includes premium titles of the time including Dune, Prince of Persia, Oregon Trail, Wolfenstein, etc. They are hosting the complete game to play right in the browser (see second link.)

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Maybe you've heard the expression, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"?

Being rigorous about permission-in-advance can result in an involved, costly process that often reaches dead-ends and unthinking default ass-covering "no"s.

On the other hand, being bold and then waiting for objections can achieve much more. And by the pragmatism of common-law, and the rough precedents of DMCA takedown procedures, it's plausibly legally defensible! Or at least in practice not too risky.

Most complainants don't want a legal battle, just a prompt fix-upon-request. And some may even be unofficially indifferent to non-profit reproduction, as long as they don't have to go on-record giving permission. In that way, they reserve the right to object at any arbitrary later date, without incurring any negotiation/legal overhead in the meantime.

Presumably they have copyright permissions. For example, see the work done by Jason Scott of archive.org with the author of Prince of Persia to track down the source, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8 . But it's archive.org and they push the edge; in part because we don't know where that edge is.

Correct, it's an exemption. https://archive.org/about/dmca.php

(originally submitted by user tosh)

The exemption is to the DMCA's anti-circumvention clause, not to copyright protection itself. Those exemptions allow you to break DRM in certain circumstances -- they don't grant you any extra rights to copy/distribute/perform works you don't have rights to.

besides Prince of Persia, anybody knows of source code release for any of these games?

Not all games have permission to be archived.

Nobody here on Hacker News or the Internet seems to care about copyright of old DOS Video Games and permission to download and play them. It is like they are being given free candy, and they enjoy it, even if technically it was stolen.

But there is a DMCA takedown page that copyright holders can request their games be taken down.

I figure some of the video game makers that have games on Steam and Gog.com will issue takedown requests.

Enjoy it while you can. The Underdogs did an DOS video game abandonware archive 10 years ago and had to take games down as well.

We are all into this playing old games on modern systems craze, so much that we don't really care about copyright and permissions anymore.

The Internet Archive is a non-profit and claims to use the library defense. The Pirate Bay once did this as well, but it didn't work.

Some games like Prince of Persia got released to the public so no permission problems there.

BTW some of the games are really porn, beware if you got your sons and daughters looking into the old DOS games.

A lot of the material on archive.org doesn't have permission to be archived. They did not seek out each copyright holder of GeoCities when they made their archive, available from https://archive.org/web/geocities.php . Are you going to say that that was stolen? Or was it saved?

And, sorry to break this to you, but we never really cared about copyright and permissions in the first place. Look at the uproar over TRAC when Mooers couldn't get copyright for it at all, so tried to enforce trademark protection over it. Look at the Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists in the 1970s. Look at the sheer joy of people using the original Napster in 1999.

The games industry of the 1970s and early 1980s didn't even really pay attention to trademarks, which is how we ended up with the classic BASIC game "Star Trek".

I wrote some things, I had a few Geocities web pages, I worked on some DOS Games, I wrote some games in Commodore 64 BASIC, I helped make text files for a community college BBS in 1989. All of which got used without my permission. I never saw one penny for such things.

But I see how it works now, I don't own my own works, and they are free to be copied and put on display for others to use for free.

In the early 1970's and 1980's there was still a 'fair use' clause in copyright. For non-commercial use, for educational use, for parody/satire, etc. The DMCA changed that so after 1999 copyright law and IP law was more strict. That is why you could have a game in BASIC named Star Trek and not have Paramount care that you did. That is why there were several versions of the old BBS game Tradewars, originally written in BASIC for a TRS-80, and then converted to IBM BASICA, and then in Turbo Pascal, and then Tradewars 2002. Because all of that was done before the DMCA passed.

I can tell by the downvotes that the community here does not care about permission and encourages the copying and saving of older material as some sort of library.

Stuff I worked on as side projects way back in the day, appear to be part of Archive.org and other sites. Yet nobody cares.

Will the side projects people write today get copied and saved in the same way? Will all of the time we spend on working on side projects go to support some archive site?

Lots of those abandonware games are open now. Atari released source code to some classics publicly years back. And they still show up as paid games on devices occasionally because public domain open source is like that. When you say nobody cares you act like there are these starving video game artists who would be able to afford bread if only WE cared a little bit and bought the games. Bought them where? And to play on what? Most of us reading and interested in this are of the age who not only cared but already bought the games. We paid their salary with first-run purchases and pumping in the quarters. Then the systems eventually stopped working and we no longer had options because we were just dumb average consumers we couldn't rebuild our systems. But we paid a lot of salaries back in the day didn't we? A lot of old games were homebrew but the vast majority of games that people know of were through publishers. The devs made money out of the gate as employees or through publisher contracts. Publishers survived a while, or didn't, merged, squandered, were bought etc etc. After everything now, how much do the creators stand to gain if the games can't be played? Even somebody with the biggest heart isn't gonna "care" about a dissolved publisher of a game, when nobody on staff at the new name corp even had anything to do with the game back then.

Yeah there's money in nostalgia but it doesn't go to creators. Even if suddenly a movie was made about some classic game, it's not like suddenly the game creators are gonna get a massive revival of players or royalties. Most of them have no contract to earn royalties. Not our fault. The game would have to be re-released on a new platform, recoded, made better and you'd be looking at the new developers making the money on appstore sales. Most people in the tech community know how broken copyright and patents are. And when a system is broken (like how copyright and patents mostly don't encourage advancement or creativity. Especially if nobody pops up with legitimate claims on works. Now if somebody's grandson does a reddit AMA about grandpa who designed and developed River Raid and is down on his luck, that's hustle and that's gonna be people reaching out to that person because they want to, not because they are owed back royalties.

An original game developer now is better off kickstarting plans to buy the IP back whatever 10th company owns it now, and selling logo licensing through Hot Topic. Old games are historically interesting and valuable but no longer for the masses who spend money. I can buy a game on steam any winter or summer that had 100 devs working for 3 years to finish it paying less than what I paid for Atari cartridges back in the day. And that game may last me 30 hours of play.

If anyone deserves to make any remaining profit off the games, it's the original designers and devs. But they're gonna have to hustle like everyone else in the entertainment biz to make money off their work. Find a way into the comic cons as speakers or autograph signings, start new companies, reach out to old fans, find new fans. The magic here, the things us classic players care about is that the games play. And archive.org made that happen. If anyone's helping these old devs, it's archive.org. because you need an emulator to play them. If they become popular again, people standing in line, I think the game devs if they did stand to profit from revival might consider paying a percentage the tireless emulator developers for breathing new life into their work.

Sure some games have been released to the public.

There are a lot of the original creators of the games that have died already, a lot of publishers that went out of business and only exist on paper on some underwriter's desk.

I used to work on side-projects in the 1980's and 1990's, somehow they ended up on the Internet for free. Nobody is interested in me making modern day versions of them. I tried Kickstarter and Indiegogo but nothing.

Heck I an others even tried to document the classic BBS DOS based games on Wikipedia, who deleted them because the only source for them were Boardwatch Magazine that is rare and out of print.

I've seen Classic Remakes like Bard's Tale that was basically a pale imitation of the original game with better graphics but not very good game play. True it did include the original game in an emulator, but it failed. Another remake was called Devil's Whiskey to avoid copyright in names, but it had the classic Bard's Tale elements to it. For some reason Devil's Whiskey failed as well.

You do see people remaking classic games on iPhone and Android devices. Then using a different name.

In the Atari 2600 world Activision and iMagic made games based on other games but with different graphics and sounds and different names. Activision had Chopper Command that was like the William's Defender arcade game. Activision also had Chicken that was sort of a Frogger clone. iMagic had Demon Attack that was sort of a Galaga clone with a twist. I think Atlantis by iMagic was supposed to be a Missile Command sort of game as well.

You can see all of the 3D shooters based on Doom and Quake on Steam, in fact you can buy Doom and Quake on Steam and it runs them in DOSBOX.

Sure I spent a whole lot of money on DOS and Windows video games. I still have the original disks somewhere in boxes in my basement. I still have a Packard Bell 486 clone that can play them too.

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